Qiagen buys Biotage’s Biosystems business

Qiagen has announced its purchase of all assets related to the Biosystems business of Biotage – a public listed developer, manufacturer and distributor of medicinal chemistry and genetic analysis products headquartered in Sweden.

The acquisition of the Uppsala-based firm is valued at approximately 53 million dollars (29.9 million pounds) – subject to certain customary purchase price adjustments – and performance milestone payments of up to around seven million dollars over the next four years.

Best known for having pioneered Pyrosequencing, a fundamental technology in next-generation sequencing, the Biosystems unit of Biotage is described as fitting with Qiagen in "extraordinary" fashion by Torben Joergensen, Biotage’s chief executive.

"Qiagen has an excellent molecular assay and also epigenetic portfolios which perfectly fits together with our PyroMark instruments," he adds, noting many of the firm’s customers are also consumers of products from Qiagen – which has over 2,800 employees across more than 30 locations.